Today, it’s Friday! And I know for a lot of you out there
it’s been your last day of work before Christmas!! Well done! You’re finished!
Hurrayyyyy! You can OFFICIALLY kick off your shoes and put on your Christmas
jumper. Get yourself a tin of biscuits and the TV remote. Shout someone to pour
you a Bailey’s… then go get it yourself. Back to the settee and park! That’s
it: you’re in position for Christmas!!

It’s bliss! Give it a week or so and you might be where I am
with festivities. That is, setting an alarm for NO REASON in the morning.
Literally, just so you’re awake to see the morning for a change. That’s what I
did today! And it wasn’t half bad, readers. I went for a waaaalk, I caught
Lorraaaaine, I wrote out all my deadline dates! It was a slight improvement on
being on bed. I think.

The view this morning!

Anyway, this afternoon I started googling recipes with
marmalade in them. My mum’s been requesting some marmalade-themed baking since
we went to see the new Paddington Bear film together last weekend! And it’s a
whole world! There’s so many recipes to go at! I’ve never really eaten
marmalade before and it’s not something I keep in my cupboards, but I’m
definitely game for trying it out in some new baking.

And this started today! The recipe I chose online in the end
was a simple one for marmalade cookies. Everyone’s in grazing-mode at home and
I thought a cookie would be something small enough for people to snack on. And I
had a cool idea for how to decorate them! Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are on
offer at the moment at our corner shop and I had the idea to use the chocolate
segments to put on top of my cookies. Because everyone loves Terry’s…
especially me!

Here’s how to bake up your own Chocolate Marmalade Cookies…

1.Heat your oven to 200ᵒC.

2.Line 3 baking trays with greaseproof paper.

3.Measure your butter and sugar into a mixing
bowl, and cream together with a wooden spoon.

4.Spoon your marmalade and crack your egg into the
bowl. Stir it up!

5.Measure out your flour and baking powder. Stir
half into the mix, then add the other half and stir again… until you have
thick, smooth cookie dough.

6.Use a tablespoon to dollop your mix out on the
baking sheets.

7.Then, use the back of a teaspoon to smooth your
balls of dough into cookie shapes.

8.Bake in the oven for ten minutes!

ChefBeHere Top Tip: I forgot about mine ENTIRELY. I left
them in the oven waaaay too long. As a result, they went black around the edges
and stuck to the baking paper. No joke. I had to try to CHISEL them off. Many
were lost. Don’t do this.

10.Melt your chocolate in the microwave (or over
boiling water on a hob if, like my dad, you still haven’t bought a microwave)
and decorate your cookies with it! Pop an orange segment on top of each cookie
to finish them off.

Here’s how they came out!!

In the end, I think I finished about 16 cookies, but if you
don’t weld them to the paper like I did you could stand to bake a good 20-24. I
recommend spacing them so there are only about 6 to a tray maybe, because I
tried to get 8 on a tray and some of my cookies got more than friendly. There
was some merging and mingling of cookies in the oven. It was a hotbed for
cookie baby-making action.

Even though my cookies are sort of “made with love” (Read:
They went tits up!), these babies still taste bloody good! I was eating all the
non-burnt broken pieces as I decorated the good ones and I can vouch for the
orangey, buttery flavour of this recipe. These cookies are really festive! And
I fail to see how chocolate on top can have made them worse. So, they’re sort
of a success?? Not in the way I’d imagined, but still! These cookies are,
somehow, decent!

So have a go!! Don’t burn them like me and don’t stick them
to the paper, and you’ll possibly have made the best cookies ever! I’m sure
Paddington Bear would think so, anyway. And you’d have to leave your lovely,
warm Christmassy home to go buy proper cookies from the shop, so why not stay
in and have a try at making your own?? This was a fun bake and I hope some of
you are inspired to take it on. Spreading the fun. Plus, I know you can do
better than me! I believe! Go cookie-fy your kitchen this Christmas.